By Nizar Sakhnini
Partition of Palestine into two-states was introduced on 29 November 1947 when Resolution # 181 was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Palestinian Arabs took to the streets in protest of tearing their home and giving away a major part of it to strangers. Palestinians’ rejection of partition was used as a pretext to justify the Zionist war aimed at ethnic cleansing Palestine from its Arabs and stealing their homes and lands.
Arab cities and villages were attacked pushing Palestinian Arabs into flight. The British were still responsible to keep law and order in Palestine. They did nothing to stop the Zionist atrocities. All they did was offering trucks and boats to carry the Palestinians fleeing in panic during April and May 1948.
Over 750,000 Palestinian Arabs ended up as refugees in neighboring Arab countries and were not allowed to return to their homes and lands, which were stolen and used to accommodate Jewish immigrants coming from all corners of the globe.
Within 6 decades, the Zionist dream began to evaporate. Inspite of all the Zionist atrocities, Palestinian Arabs did not vanish into thin air. Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are more than 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if the Refugees were not allowed to return to their homes and lands. Accordingly, creation of a puppet ‘Palestinian State’ would rid the Zionist entity from its Arabs. That’s why even Netanyahu had accepted the ‘two-state solution’.
But what kind of a ‘Palestinian State’ they are talking about?
On 5 December 1967, Yitzhak Rabin suggested that a Palestinian State be established in the West Bank “that would be connected to Israel”. (Ha’aretz, 5 June 2009)
Following the Madrid Peace Conference in 1990, Yitzhak Shamir said he had intended to let the peace process linger for ten years or more in order to have time to settle the West Bank with Jews and therefore create irreversible facts on the ground.
On 14 January 1998, the Israeli government decided to keep control of all Jewish settlements, water resources, holy sites and all infrastructures in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It will not yield control of these “vital and national interests” under any negotiations with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu cabinet declared in a statement that “Israel’s vital and national interests in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley…will constitute the basis of the interim agreement and the final status agreement with the Palestinians”. (The Toronto Star, 15 Jan. 1998)
On 19 May 1999, Ehud Barak said he did not rule out a Palestinian State emerging from negotiations, provided it did not cross four ‘red lines’ he has set as vital to Israel’s security: he would not agree to a foreign army west of the Jordan River, that Israel would not return to the borders it controlled before the 1967 war, he ruled out ceding control over any part of Jerusalem and said that Israel would keep large blocs of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. (Yahoo News – Reuters, 19 May 1999)
On 22 April 2000, Shamir suggested that Israel should expeditiously settle a million Jews in the West Bank to put an end once and for all to the prospects of Palestinian statehood west of the River Jordan.
In May 2001, the Mitchell Committee (headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell) concluded that Jewish settlements are a barrier to peace. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon vowed to continue expanding the settlements.
In June 2003, Israel began building an apartheid wall aimed at caging Palestinian Arabs into densely populated Bantustan-like areas.
On 27 November 2007, the U.S. sponsored a one-day peace conference in Annapolis, which launched a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process. On his way back to Israel, Olmert stated: “Without the Two-State Solution, the State of Israel is finished.”
In his speech on 14 June 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu declared that he accepts a Palestinian State. Such a state, according to Netanyahu, should recognize “Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish People”. Moreover, Israel has nothing to do with the problem of the Palestinian refugees, which must be solved outside the borders of Israel. In addition, the Palestinian State must be demilitarized, with no army and no control of air space. And, according to Netanyahu, “Jerusalem remains the united capital of Israel.”
The ‘State of Palestine’ they are talking about will be created within an area of less than 20% of Mandate Palestine and surrounded with a wall. This is not a State. It is an open air prison.
– Nizar Sakhnini contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
